New Delhi

4 November 2007

West Asia conference: Delhi willing, but is US listening?

India will be ready and willing to join other countries at the United

States-sponsored West Asia conference later this year, according to sources tracking

India's engagement of West Asia.

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas are

expected to meet at Annapolis, Maryland, in the US in late November or early December.

Washington has not yet set a date for the peace summit or even formally announced

who will attend.

"If we are invited, we should go [but] invitation has to come from the host country," a

source told this newspaper. It will be the first time ever that India will be invited to a

conference of that nature.

According to another source, Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas is keen that India be

invited to the conference. The source said that Mr Abbas reiterated his desire to see

India at the Annapolis conference when Mr Chinmaya R Gharekhan, Prime Minister

Manmohan Singh's special envoy for West Asia and the Middle East peace process,

called on him last month at the Hyderabad airport.

Mr Gharekhan confirmed as much. He told this newspaper that New Delhi will take

appropriate decision, if the US extended an invitation to it at the request of the

Palestinians.

"We don't know [it the invitation will come.] That is what the Palestinians want. The

Palestinian president was very categorical that he is very insistent that India should be

invited," Mr Gharekhan said.

"I had gone specifically to meet him (Mr Abbas). He was passing through on his way

back from some official visit that he has made and so I went there to receive him on

behalf of the government," he said about his meeting with the Palestinian president.

"We spent about an hour together at the Hyderabad airport. He talked about the state of

the peace process, how it is going. He seemed to me generally optimistic, hopeful that

things might move," Mr Gharekhan recalled.

The sources, however, sought to suggest that the conference must not be reduced to a

"photo opportunity". It should instead produce something concrete, more than a

declaration.

Saudi Arabia, for one, has indicated that it will not want to attend a conference that will

become a photo-op for Israeli leaders to shake hands with the Saudi King or foreign

minister.

The sources said that the Arab world wants to see a framework document, not a

declaration of principles, on the six outstanding issues of the borders, settlements,

Jerusalem, refugees, water, and security.

The Arab world is saying that there must be clear guidelines so that the actual

negotiations could start soon after the conference ends, and that the negotiations must

conclude within a certain timeframe, according to the sources.

"Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) feels within a maximum of six months, the negotiations

must conclude and Palestinian state born," a source said, adding that "it still remains to

be seen how much Israel is willing to go along."